Rock Tumbler Instructions | Hacker News Reader

Rock Tumbler Instructions

rocktumbler.com

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My mum spent much of our youth, upon return from yearly holidays to her small seaside home town, tumbling rocks. We were kinda cluttered people growing up, so among other things (an extensive sci-fi collection, hundreds of kitchen gadgets, every microcomputer under the sun) we always had little piles and containers of beautiful shiny rocks strewn around the place. I never had the patience for the tumbling process, but on every beach I considered it my responsibility to find the most intriguing shapes and colours of rocks, fill my pockets, and bring them home. She died this year. We were supposed to scatter her ashes on that beach but my dad refused for inscrutable reasons. And I have a big pile of boring, dull rocks, that neither my mum, nor the relentless sea, is ever going to transform.

Sorry for your loss. I hope you find good closure when you're ready - your rock collection is a great treasure and might serve as either a memento for you or a surrogate for ashes if you wanted to spread them on your nearby beach. Kind of a nice metaphor for a life well lived; collected from the chaos of the beach, polished up, and eventually returned, hopefully leaving things a little bit better.

Your mum sounds very much like someone I would have liked.

Sorry you lost your mum, I’m in that club too.

The relentless sea may not transform them the way she did, but it will transform them nonetheless.

Might be a worthwhile ritual taking a handful to the shore and launching them out into earth’s great rock tumbler in her honor.

Or not; grief wears a new mask for each of us.

I have a rock tumbler that I got as a present. It's neat, but this page is right - it takes a long time, and you end up using a lot of grit as well, and it must be done in order. Oh, and did I mention that it's noisy? Definitely not a hobby for ... me.

But! One thing I have found interesting is that you can make your own "sea glass", by breaking wine or beer bottles, and tumbling the big-ish chunks. The thicker the glass, the better, of course. I'm experimenting with just using some sand as the grit material; the glass doesn't come out shiny and smooth, but it definitely wears down the sharp edges.

(And I run the tumbler thing in our detached garage.)

I add ceramic fillers to make sure the barrel is at least 3/4 full. It makes very little noise that way; I can't hear it when standing outside the door of the room I'm running it in.

I like the glass idea, that sounds fun.

> ceramic fillers

Thanks for this tip. I'm planning on buying a friend a tumbler for xmas, and if this works as advertised, I feel this would be a must have as part of the gift.

Edit: of course, TFA mentions this as well for those willing to click the link <facepalm>

It's a long article :)

My girlfriend loves sea glass and has a rock tumbler. I think we will try this, thanks!

You can pick up Silicon Carbide grit pretty cheap online ( impure moissanite ). I have several tumblers, but have yet to finish the process of making polished gems- but it is still on my bucket list :). I have made lots of "sea glass: though. I have taken quite a bit to the local beach ( about 40 miles north of Palm Beach Fl. ) I toss it into the surf, figuring it will make some beachcombers happy. My logic is that once it has been in the ocean a few days, it will actually be sea glass. I would not make that claim for any of the glass that comes straight out of the tumbler though. Next time you visit a craft show and see folks with "Sea glass" Jewelry, note if they have separate displays for "real" sea glass, and man made.

I have strongly negative connotations with rock tumblers. When I was about 8 I saw one in a store and thought it would turn regular rocks into precious stones. One of the biggest disappointments of my childhood.

I hope you didn't buy Sea Monkeys next.

Or XRay Specs

Fun fact: Both were invented by the same guy, Harold Nathan Braunhut.

Wow, that guy is a piece of work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_von_Braunhut

Rather abrupt shift in topic in that article

While we are on the topic of famous and bad inventions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.

Nothing compared to the 6-foot glow-in-the-dark skeleton (actually a folded plastic poster) or the Submarine! (ditto).

I was lucky to live in an area with a lot of interesting semi-precious stones that you could just find by looking around.

I wasn’t aware that there were places that had semi-precious stones just lying around. Where are you from?

Anywhere with granite will have lots of quartz of various types

Yeah, I dug up a bunch of quartz crystals, some granite containng small fossils (tiny clams, small spiral shells etc), and a few pieces of turqoise in the backyard as a kid. How interesting the rocks in your own backyard are depends a lot on the geological history of the area though.

If it contained fossils, it wasn't granite.

Herkimer in upstate NY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herkimer_diamond

Precious/semi-precious stones are rather arbitrarily defined. Various forms of chalcedony (agates, jasper, chert, etc) can often be called such, and are very common sometimes.

I’ve buckets of agates and jasper, among other things (like petrified wood) that I’ve found in fields while doing my ag job here in the willamette valley of Oregon. Oregon as a whole is amazing for rockhounding. There are some spots where I can’t go a several feet without seeing a 1cm or larger agate just laying there. Makes it hard to concentrate. I’ve mostly got it out of my system now though.

Cleaned up a bunch thanks to an ultrasonic cleaner, and one day will tumble a bunch to give away.

https://www.blm.gov/visit/sunstone-collection-area

Among others, but this one is one that is well known among gemhounds/lapidarists.

Oh, of course. The Bureau of Land Management.

What does your comment mean? Of course what?

The claims made on that kind of hobby tool, in that era, serve as a fantastic argument for truth-in-advertising laws. Looking at you, the perpetual ad for (plans for) time machines and force fields in the back of Boy's Life.

Same. I also had one when the school mail-order book fair offered a diary with a padlock on it. I wasn't even into writing, but I thought a locking book was so cool. 8 weeks later it shows up and turns out to be just a regular hardcover diary with the cover printed to look like a padlock.

Me, just the opposite, but my dad was a jeweler, so my context was much better informed. I was positively surprised by how cool rocks looked after smoothing and then polishing.

Slightly older, I graduated to polishing cabachons on a grinder system.

Teenage me learned to solder gold rings to new sizes, which benefitted young electrical engineering me - gold and lead solder very similarly.

All of this, I now realize, was more-or-less a planned arc/quasi-apprenticeship training for the family store.

I've been tumbling rocks with my kids for about a year now. Two tips that made it actually sustainable: (1) ceramic media is a must-have, not optional - cuts the noise by 80% and you can run it indoors, and (2) skip the "perfect rocks" hunt and just tumble broken glass bottles instead. Takes 2-3 weeks vs 2-3 months, looks amazing, and my kids can actually see results before they lose interest. We keep a jar of the sea glass pieces on the kitchen counter and it's become a surprisingly nice conversation starter when guests visit.

I had a rock hounding phase in my life ... It was something fun to do with the family and we have a lot of interesting rocks in BC.

I built my own rock tumbler using some wood, hardware store bits, and an old geared DC motor... I also used commercial rock tumblers. Those worked better ;)

It takes a really long time to tumble rocks, you have to go through the grits like a week or two at a time, and they sort of come out without a lot of character. Hand polishing them (with power grinders and polishers) is a lot more satisfying and you can make them into your own. That does require more equipment though.

My first tumbler was built from a lawnmower my dad discarded when I was around 11 years old. I buried it in the forest and topped up the gas whenever I had time. It really did not work at all.

Loved the twist ending.

Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728

What does that have to do with attempts at DIY rock tumblers?

the lawnmower is the link

...You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower.

... and your thinking is that because someone else mentioned a lawnmower, you should bring up that meme about Ellison, even though it's clearly nothing to do with the OP?

Yes, the first thing that pops into my head whenever anyone mentions lawnmowers is Larry Ellison, and the other way around too.

Just like couches and JD Vance.

Time for a remake of Lawnmower Man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lawnmower_Man_(film)

My family (wife and 2nd grade daughter) have taken to coming home with numerous rocks from every vacation we have taken in the past few years. I purchased a double barrel tumbler and we have a nice little ritual each weekend of being able to move two batches of rocks at different stages along their polishing journey, admiring the changes and characteristics of the batches as they move along the process and then their ultimate result.

We now have quite the collection of wonderfully polished rocks of all kinds from the places we have been. I do the cleaning and preparing each weekend but have it down to a quick 10-15 minutes in total time. It’s simple yet magical and I’m slowly seeing how my house is going to look come retirement

Similar tumblers (just a little bigger) are used to deburr and finish metal parts after fabrication.

https://www.enginebuildermag.com/2020/10/parts-tumblers/

Or polish brass bullet casings for those that reload their own ammo.

I've done this, extensively. Produces beautiful, spotless, polished brass. Nothing else comes close. For the high quality of the result, there is no easier or more cost effective way. It's also fast, quiet and produces no lead/nickel/copper/etc. laden dust: quality of life things that make a real difference.

Things to know: Get magnetic stainless steel rod type media. It's not free, but lasts a long time. Use a good surfactant and soften the water, or use distilled water in the tumbler, and rinse with the same. Very important: thoroughly inspect for stuck media in the brass; it will stick inside due to water tension, and primer holes are eager to cling. The clean brass will oxidize because the process removes whatever protection the factory used and exposes unoxidized brass: figure out some coating that works for your use case.

I'm reasonably sure I've seen at least one of the "restore old things" channels using a kind of vibrating bath with abrasive material for getting rust off and/or polishing old pieces of metal. Like a static sand blaster, I guess.

[0] isn't one of them but at least I'm not entirely mad - it does happen.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VyRGoq5EnQ "The Secret Shine: How Vibration Polishing Perfects Stainless Steel"

The only thing I know about rock tumblers is that Steve Jobs thinks they're like teams of people building software...

Apple must have been a noisy, violent place :P

Lots of comments are talking about how loud rock tumbling is. I have an interest and space in my basement but I'm reticent to pull the trigger without knowing if it's going to be intolerably loud upstairs. Does anybody know how many dB the process actually generated?

Edit: Finally got to a PC to do some search-engine investigation and found this: https://rocktumbler.com/tips/how-much-noise-does-a-tumbler-m...

Rock tumbler enclosure, soundproofing box.

I worry about heat dissipation, but maybe that's considered.

When I printed my "underground newspaper" on a dot matrix printer, back in high school, I thought I'd get away with so much printing without my dad knowing by putting a cardboard box over the printer to deaden the sound. It worked until it didn't. Luckily the printer had a thermistor on the printhead and just stopped versus continuing to brainlessly grind until seizing-up.

We had a largish cooler for fishing. I ended up putting a towel in the bottom of the cooler to absorb vibrations, closed the lid over the power cord. I checked the temperature a bunch at first to check for overheating, but it wasn't an issue.

We didn't keep at it long, but that kept the noise from being an issue. It was a slow, messy process and we were too busy to pay attention to it over long periods of time.

The motor has a power rating. Compare that to a similar light bulb. Done.

It's not that bad. Put a box over it with a blanket or two and you'll be fine.

I let Home Assistant turn it on once the house is empty, and then off once someone is home.

Neighbours hate this one trick

I got this one a few months ago and have been running it in my basement directly under my living room, separated only by the floor and a bit of insulation. Can't hear it at all. It's been working well and it's a fun low-investment hobby. I live on a glacial moraine so there are lots of unique rocks in my backyard, and my son enjoys digging for them. https://a.co/d/4HSnVVX

Small pieces of the old world still exist, if you can find them

I think I like this post because, simpler things, simpler times.

I'm having fun putting garbage into mine right now. [0] Glass is pretty hard to go wrong with.

Not so fun when particular rocks crumble into clay, and eat all the nice ones into concrete, but it happens.

[0] https://mastodon.social/@shaknais/115432438259932708

Funny, was just thinking about this the other day as my daughter is currently obsessed with rocks. Did some research and.. nah, I'll just buy polished rocks off the jungle store.

A long time ago I had a brief rock-hounding phase and found some cool rocks. Polished them on a friend's polishing setup. That was pretty fun. I'd rather get back into that vs tumbling.

What's the difference between a polisher and a tumbler?

IIRC the setup my friend had included a diamond wet saw and various polishing and grinding wheels. For instance I used some wax to stick a rock on the end of a stick and shaped it into a cabochon and, using the various polishing wheels, got it to shine.

A tumbler is just a bunch of rocks and polish bouncing around for a week and you never know what you'll get.

I have favorited this thread. It has the best comments I have read in 10 years of hn.

I want to go and build a tumbler now. I'm imagining it is another good use for an old sewing machine (I hoard a few for projects)

I’m making one out of a treadmill that I snagged over Covid (and subsequently never used)! Idea is to make a jig to hold the tumbler in place. Maybe make it removable so I can still choose to not use the treadmill.

You did see how long it takes, right?

nnno, I did not see that. 7 days is an awful long time to run a treadmill; not worth the energy for that use case.

I had mistook the tumbling mill for the ball mill, which is used in shorter durations for cast sterling silver polishing… I have been into lost wax casting of late

Spindle wheel and belt to adjust speed. Rigid hold-down for motor. Slideable positioning of bucket to accommodate the belt setting. Plywood base. On/Off switch with shielded wires. Done.

You are… broom! This isn’t me but here’s the idea: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/nOVFA7Kt44M

If I make a broom the spindle I will immortalize your username onto the wood base with a soldering iron.

I see a missed opportunity to use the domain rocktumblr.com.

We had one last year and followed the directions exactly. The stones came out very smooth but cloudy and dull. Not sure what went wrong.

If you want a cheap trick, take the cloudy stones and put them in a clear glass jar with water. They are usually lustrous when wet, and the jar can serve as a decorative item in a bathroom or something. I've thought of coloring the water, too, to see how that turns out.

Rubbing with oil works, too.

Just read the whole page, they have a section (with white soap) about exactly that.

Loved this as a kid. But as a parent, even putting it in the garage is just too much noise for my household, haha!

Has anyone bought un-cracked geodes before? I've not had much luck with those so far.

That's cool and all but ... what's the point? What do you do with these rocks afterwords?

I have several children in my life who are going through a shiny objects phase. I ask them to give me rocks that they like, and then I tumble those rocks for them. They really seem to like it.

Most people do this so that they can eat the rocks afterward. They are shiny and very nutritious, and it strengthens the teeth. It's normal for some teeth to break off during this phase, but a) you already have colorful rocks to replace the teeth with, and b) old broken teeth can now be placed inside the tumbler for smoothing. 9/10 geologists agree that unsmoothed teeth that aren't made of rock are the number one cause of oral hygiene problems

+1 can confirm. Also the best rock candy is made with actual rocks.

You can train the smart ones [1], and even wirelessly remotely control them with a mobile app [2], as long as you restrict yourself to commanding them to do things they were going to do anyway, just like cats.

Kudos to the Stoned Republicans of the High Frontier Panel and The Heritage Foundation for their groundbreaking earth shattering work on Smart Rocks!

[1] Brilliant Pebbles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles#Smart_Rocks

>In March 1988, Teller and Wood were able to directly brief President Reagan on the concept, taking the model pebble with them and theatrically hiding it under a black cloth when reporters were allowed to take pictures. Teller reiterated that the price for the system would be on the order of $10 billion.

Photographic proof (not AI generated): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brilliant_Pebbles_present...

[2] Pet Rock Remote Control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG0FAKkaisg

Featuring my Finger Flicking Pocket PC Pie Menus!

Halite is my favorite. I grind it up and put it in everything.

It's so rare though! Mars has a lot, but Earth has like only a handful of places. Use the artificial stuff instead, much cheaper!

This must be the first true troll to ever land on this site, freshly escaped from Discworld.

For those who don't understand I'd just point at the dietary habits of Discworld trolls.

People like the way they look and feel, and I imagine they get some satisfaction out of having turned a rough rock into something beautiful. They put them in their house where they can admire them, and others can admire them. Many are probably given away as gifts. Some might be used to create larger works of art, such as earrings or other jewelry.

As best I can tell you can’t even properly monetise this or get VC funding. Seems like a waste of effort.

Indeed spending time on things that bring you pleasure but other people may not understand isn't part of that grind mindset, if you aren't grinding you should be sleeping and honestly if you are sleeping a healthy amount you aren't grinding enough.

Or something - "because I find it enjoyable" is a perfectly self contained reason as long as you aren't hurting anyone else (or yourself).

I really appreciate the grinding puns in this comment.

> If you are sleeping a healthy amount you aren't grinding enough

Unless you build a soundproof box for your rock tumbling - then you can run it 24/7.

Gronk think, did man become so obsess with grindset that even forget like shiny rock? Even word based on grind stone. Once was, whole economy based on like shiny rock! Special ritual, give shiny rock for marry girl. Human like shiny rock seem very basic thing. Gronk wonder... what we become?

Maybe if you rub some AI on it in your pitch deck it could be acceptable to the HN peanut gallery.

I mean, it's a hobby? It doesn't necessarily have to have a point other than to enrich your existence.

My son and I get a kick out of it. For a while he was selling them on the street outside our town home, and that was absurdly lucrative for him. He has made around $200 so far. I'm pretty sure it's because he's cute. In any case, it's just a fun thing to do and experiment with, learn, and explore.

I've also thrown a bunch into an aquarium as 'river stones', because it's illegal to take them from rivers here and buying them is way too expensive. Those are just bland, small pieces of dark granite to simulate the environment the aquarium is modeled after.

Is shiny!

No, they're minerals! Jesus teiferer, I've got some geodes coming that are very delicate, alright?

After carefully weighing, cataloging, chanting, and valuation, the custom is to skip them into river of their birth. (This is why river rocks are so smooth.)

Lots of people use the end result in some other hobby like jewelry or other crafts. The stores here that cater to tourists are filled with things made from/with local tumbled stones, mostly agate. I considered getting one for a mancala set but we have a lot of rocky shoreline and river beds, finding well enough polished stones in the required shape/size is not all the difficult.

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